Change of Heart
by malikblishtar
Summary: "He's gone, but all his memories… it's like they're mine now" After the Spirit of the Millennium Ring has been put to rest, Ryou and Marik are left to mourn all they've lost... But soon they find that not all of the Spirit is lost. Angstshipping... Or, rather, how a Thiefshipper writes Angstshipping. M for language and mature themes.


Marik was a master in the art of escapism, and of course anyone that knew him, anyone that met his other self in Battle City could tell you that. He had always lived that way, unable to face pain head on, dealing with it in any way that didn't require actually dealing with it… and Ryou didn't know if he should envy or pity him for it. In the months following the ceremonial duel, and the loss of the Ring Spirit, Marik and Ryou found comfort in one another; everyone mourned openly for Yugi and the Pharaoh, and no one at all for the Spirit, his former host, and his former partner. No one could understand the loss that the two of them had suffered, or the pain they shared, and though Ryou tried to tell himself they never intended to, the others pushed them away for sympathizing with their perceived enemy. And so it was, that Marik and Ryou became all each other had.

It had started out simply, as late nights at Ryou's playing duel monsters, Marik constructing decks for them both full of stolen cards, and breakfast at dawn's first light in one of downtown Domino's all night diners. They talked about anything that held no consequence, everything that didn't matter. Distracting themselves was enough… until it wasn't.

Ryou broke first, tears spilling from his eyes and onto a plate of poached eggs and farmer's sausage, one fall morning.

"I never used to like poached eggs," his voice was barely audible above the din of the restaurant. "But He did. And so now I guess I do too. All of the things he liked, that he felt… He's gone, but all his memories… it's like they're mine now. I can barely tell what parts of me are him, and which ones are really me. I don't know who I am without him." He wept. With his head in his hands, he felt Marik slide into the booth next to him, and wrap a comforting arm around his shoulders. When Ryou looked up at him, he could see Marik's violet eyes were rimmed with red, and glossed with unshed tears of his own.

"Sometimes I forget you're not him," the Egyptian admitted. "and I have to keep from throwing myself into your arms. Sometimes I wonder if your lips would taste the same as his did," the sound that escaped his throat was a cross between a laugh and a sob, a sound so pitiful that Ryou's only response was to pull his friend into the tightest hug he could give. The two didn't know how long they sat like that, crying and holding each other, nor could they tell you how they ended up back in Ryou's bed some time later, but the how of it didn't matter to them.

What mattered in that moment was their tongues sliding together, and their hands tearing away the clothes that kept their bodies concealed. What mattered was the sensation of flesh on flesh, both foreign and familiar all at once. The feeling of Marik's fingers… coated in cold lubricant, entering him and stretching him in preparation of what was to come. It was strange, but felt almost routine. Ryou cried out as the copper digits were replaced by Marik's throbbing erection. Of course, Ryou had watched this scene unfold before, observing from the back of his mind as the Ring Spirit greedily accepted every inch offered to him. He'd seen Marik's face contorted in pleasure as he set a steady, relentless pace in and out of Ryou's body, but now… now he knew that observing was nothing like the real thing.

With time, Ryou discovered that a lot of things were like that; he'd felt glimpses, impressions of what the Spirit felt while controlling his body, and the memories remained, but experiencing them first-hand was a different, much more intense kind of story. The experiences, and the feelings that once belonged to the Ring Spirit now belonged to him; While he slept, he was haunted by the crimson eyes of Zorc Necrophades, and by images of fire, intense and all consuming, swallowing up everything he ever held dear. While he woke, he found he'd slip into daydreams of exacting revenge against Yugi, resenting the boy that he once called a friend.

But it wasn't all bad… His reflexes had become catlike, and if he were a character in one of his RPGs, his stealth would have been maxed out. He was sure that, should he ever want to, he could steal anything from anyone in Domino, and never be caught. He had become a master of Egyptian cuisine, and one afternoon he was even able to surprise Marik with authentic kushari, a dish he'd never even heard of outside his head. When Marik undressed before him that evening, Ryou found he could read the markings on his back, hieroglyphs as clear in his mind as his native tongue.

The scars that marred that otherwise flawless, golden skin may as well have been on Ryou's heart, because the strongest, most brutal feeling that the Ring Spirit left behind was his love for Marik. And as he was taken that night, Ryou traced the lines with gentle fingers, just as the Spirit had many times before him. When Marik finished within him, it was with a cry of _Bakura_ , and while that name did indeed belong to him, Ryou knew that he wasn't the one Marik was calling for.

Loving a person that only loves someone you aren't is both painful and exhausting. Ryou's whispered affections were accepted with closed eyes, and uncertainty was masked by resplendent smiles. When Ryou's _I love you_ 's were returned, the _Bakura_ at the end didn't need to be spoken to be heard. In the beginning, love and sorrow were one and the same to Ryou, but in the end, what other choice did he have? He was Marik's escape from reality. When they were together, he knew Marik's heart hurt just a little bit less, and Ryou couldn't bear to take that from him. If it were Marik's happiness over his own, he'd choose Marik's every time.

It was a cool midnight in March, the remnants of winter still fighting for supremacy over the budding spring, that Ryou lay sleepless with a slumbering Marik curled in his arms. Locks of flaxen hair splayed out over a snow white chest, and unconscious utterances of the Ring Spirit's name danced mockingly through the room. It had been six months since that morning in the diner, since they'd christened the very bed they now filled, and while Ryou had managed to work his way through all the stages of grief, Marik was still very much stuck on denial – though Ryou doubted that he'd ever move on, as he had always found comfort in such denial.

Ryou accepted that the Ring Spirit would always be the great love of Marik's life, that no feeling could ever rival what those two felt for one another, though that didn't stop him from dreaming of a day that Marik might love him, not because of the person he once contained, but for the one he was now. Though it seemed in that moment a distant fantasy, the idea wasn't that outlandish, Ryou pondered; sure, he somewhat resembled the Ring Spirit, and held his past within his own mind, but that's where the connection ended. The two of them sounded nothing alike, and Ryou wasn't insufferable enough to refer to himself with honorifics. Ryou wasn't cruel or sarcastic, nor was revenge on the Pharaoh his only hobby. And, maybe he occasionally pleasured Marik the way the Spirit would have, but even so, he'd found his own ways to love Marik without the aid of his memories. Despite these differences, Marik always stayed with him, even seemed to enjoy being with him.

Would it be cruel to try and force Marik out of his denial, Ryou wondered, or would it be crueler to himself to live on this way forever? Would Marik be truly broken without a means of escape from his loss, or would he be happier if he could love again? Ryou didn't know.

Kissing his sleeping companion's forehead, he sighed. "I wish you could see the real me." Marik dreamt on in blissful ignorance.

"Do you want to play cards?" Ryou asked cheerfully one rainy spring afternoon. Marik smirked at him.

"Feel like getting your ass handed to you?"

"Don't count on it. I put together a new deck I'm dying to try out!" Which was partially true, he did very much want to try out this deck, but it wasn't one he'd constructed, it was one that had been left buried beneath clothes and stacks of tabletop games in his closet. Marik cocked an eyebrow, but Ryou just continued to smile innocently at him.

Marik cleared them a space on the floor, and laid out their play mats on the carpet – no fancy duel disks or holograms for them. The apartment was just too small, and Ryou wasn't too keen on having his Monster World figurines destroyed by rouge effect monsters. They seated themselves across from one another, both shuffling their cards, and exchanging witty banter as they drew their hands. A coin was flipped, and it was decided that Ryou would go first.

"I'll start by setting one card in defense position. I lay two more cards face down, and end my turn," he said, placing his cards on the field, and sitting back to watch Marik make his move. Things went slowly at first, neither player losing any life points, and Ryou's low level fiend type monsters being destroyed by Marik's Gravekeeper's.

"Are you sure this is the deck you thought you could beat me with?" Marik laughed. "Because all you're doing successfully is filling up your graveyard."

"Don't worry, I've still got some tricks up my sleeve," Ryou assured, though he knew Marik was not going to like what was coming next. "I'm going to banish three fiend type monsters from my graveyard to summon Dark Necrofear in attack mode." Ryou didn't like the way the smile fell from Marik's lips, nor did he enjoy the silence that hung in the air around them. "And I will destroy your Gravekeeper's Heretic. That will end my turn." The irony of destroying the white-haired Egyptian depicted on Marik's card was not lost on him.

The game carried on, with Ryou sending Dark Necrofear to his graveyard to send Dark Sanctuary from his deck to his hand, then setting the card as the active field spell. With every passing turn, Marik looked more and more distraught, and Ryou felt worse and worse for putting him through this… but he thought maybe, just maybe if he played and lost this duel, just as the Spirit had in Battle City, if Marik himself could defeat this deck, just as his dark half had, it would allow him to lay the Spirit's memory to rest. It took a ceremonial duel to give Yugi closure with the Pharaoh, maybe that's what Marik needed too.

They didn't even make it to the end of the game before Marik, with tears in his eyes, threw his cards at Ryou.

"I hate you. You think I don't know what you're doing? Well fuck you, I fucking hate you, and I never want to see you again!" he wailed, before storming from Ryou's apartment, slamming the door behind him. Ryou rose to run after him, but he was already gone. Ryou slumped back down onto the floor, and sighed heavily. Had he made the right choice? Because right then, it certainly didn't feel like it.

It was more than two weeks – seventeen days, not that he was counting – before he heard from Marik again, and he still wouldn't have if not for Ishizu. The phone call came early one morning, the chirping from his cell phone waking him from a restless sleep.

"I'm at my wits end, I can't stand to see him this way. He won't eat, he won't come out of his room, all he does is sleep," Ryou could tell she was trying to sound composed, but her concern was winning over her stoicism. "Please, can you try and help him?"

"I'm sorry, miss Ishtar, but Marik told me he didn't want to see me anymore," he muttered in response. He heard Marik's sister scoff through the receiver.

"You know how proud he is. He misses you, he's just too stubborn to go to you himself."

And not twenty minutes later, he found himself being led by a gracious Ishizu to Marik's bedroom. She forced a smile at Ryou, and retreated back from whence she came. When he entered the room, he found it engulfed in darkness, blackout curtains keeping the day's light at bay.

"Go away, sister. Whatever it is, I'm not interested," he groaned, not looking up.

"Marik?" Ryou whispered. Through the inky blackness, he could see movement coming from the direction of Marik's voice.

"You're not Ishizu," he said weakly. Ryou chuckled.

"No, not quite."

"Why are you here? I thought I made my feelings towards you perfectly clear. Please leave," his voice wavered, and his words had very little resolve within them. Ryou pushed onwards towards the voice. When his legs bumped into the mattress, he perched himself on the edge of it, and Marik didn't push him away. He reached out before him, blindly groping the bed's comforter until he found a warm hand. He clasped in tightly, stroking the long delicate fingers with his thumb. Marik squeezed back in response.

"I'm sorry," Ryou murmured, and though he wasn't entirely sorry for what he'd done, he was sorry he'd made Marik upset. He felt Marik shift until his weight was pressing into his side. He felt Marik's hair tickle his neck as he rested his head on Ryou's shoulder. After a beat, Marik sighed.

"I just miss him so much, you know? Like he took a part of me with him when he went."

"I feel the same way," Ryou agreed. They sat in quietly for a while, listening to themselves breathing, before Marik broke the silence once more.

"I missed you too, you know. I hate sleeping alone."

"Then come live with me. You'll never sleep alone again." After this time without him, Ryou didn't care who Marik wanted him to be, he just wanted him by his side. He felt Marik nod, just once.

"Deal," he acquiesced. But right now you have to leave. I haven't left this room in weeks, I probably look like shit."

"I'll wait in the other room. I bet your hospitable sister is antsy that she has a guest without a drink in his hand, anyways"

After a period of adjustment – Ryou getting used to Marik's hair and beauty products cluttering the bathroom counter, Marik having to downsize his belongings because nobody but his siblings would deal with how much stuff he owned – the two fell into a comfortable routine; in the day they'd both work, or go to school, Ryou would come home and make them dinner, Marik would clean the apartment, and in the evenings they would play duel monsters, with decks constructed from stolen cards. And when they went to bed, Marik would fall asleep with his copper body wrapped around Ryou. He still murmured to the Spirit while he slept, and Ryou still lay awake at night listening to him. He still envied the way the King of Thieves had stolen Marik's heart, but it was a jealousy made bearable the night Marik stirred still half asleep, and laid a kiss on his lips before uttering a sleepy:

"I love you, Ryou."

Ryou had never minded sharing a body with the Spirit of the Ring, he supposed he could share a heart with him as well.


End file.
